Cristiano Ronaldo, how do I love thee? Let me count the
ways. They add up to . . . er, well, not very many, actually. But
then the oily, smirking, preening little bugger scores a goal like
that and, well, what is a chap supposed to do? I need help
here.
How do we solve a problem like Ronaldo?
The Portugal forward’s extraordinary goal on Wednesday settled
the tie against Porto and took Manchester United to the semi-finals
of the Champions League, and I must say, I resent it very deeply.
Not because it wasn’t brilliant, but because it was. He had no
right to score it.
It wasn’t his goal. It was Bobby Charlton’s goal. Ronaldo’s
duplication of Charlton in his pomp played havoc with my memories
and my affections. Charlton didn’t score many goals like that, but
far more than any footballer has a right to. Above all, he scored
the goal against Mexico in the World Cup of 1966, England’s first
goal in the competition, the goal that ignited belief.
And Ronaldo’s effort was very much the same sort of thing, the
defence backing off — no one can score from here — the audacious
certainty flowing into the mind of the attacker and then the
thunderbolt, the impossible distance, the bulging of the net almost
simultaneous with the strike.
I have a special thing about that Mexico goal. It was the goal
of my life. It was the goal that told me beyond all doubt that
sport was unutterably wonderful stuff and that the impossible is
sport’s daily routine. What business has Ronaldo in scoring the
same goal? It’s dreadful. I must start considering Ronaldo in the
same terms as Charlton. In terms of ability, anyway.
Every time I hear someone describe Ronaldo as the best
footballer in the world, I have always decisively rejected the
notion. I think of others, someone, anyone . . . and yet no
convincing alternative comes to mind. And that’s deeply
dispiriting.
There was no problem in admiring Bobby. He was a fabulous
player, he also invariably came across as a decent fellow, a
likeable man, a man of quiet charm, a man with a sense of the team
and his place within it, a man who, despite his certainty about his
own talent, possessed a sense of modesty and proportion.
But with Ronaldo, you realise at once that a person can be a
great footballer and at the same time insufferable. And let’s hear
no nonsense about how I don’t know him, how I am not privy to his
private thoughts, about his love for his family and his kindness to
dogs. I do know him. We all know him. We know him from the brutal
examination of human nature that is sport. Sport does not build
character, sport reveals character, and much of what sport reveals
in Ronaldo is uncompromisingly obnoxious.
Please don’t feel that I am caught up in the hatred and
rivalries of partisanship here. I feel no obligation to hate
Manchester United and their players; au contraire, the club have
given me more football to get excited about and more personalities
to discuss than any other.
It’s not just rivals of United who find Ronaldo hard to love.
Neutrals feel exactly the same. He’s just too damn pleased with
himself. If, after scoring that impossible goal, he had run about
like a headless chicken with a grin all over this face, I might
have warmed a little towards him, identified with him in his moment
of triumph. But no, no smile, very determinedly no smile: look at
me, I do this sort of thing all the time and I’m cooool. Instead of
rejoicing for him, I felt a strong desire to kick him in the
rump.
That’s what Ronaldo does to people. Some players of great
ability delight you because, in a sense, they become your
representative. You revel in the skills and identify with their
practitioner. Ronaldo’s skills make you identify with the tackler.
You find yourself more amused than you should be when Ronaldo,
instead of beating his man with 13 successive step-overs, trips
over his silly prancing feet and falls on his white-shorted
arse.
There was a special delight to be found in that grotesque
penalty he took in the shoot-out in the Champions League final last
year. He put in a ludicrous, affected stutter in his run, minced up
to the ball and then saw his spot-kick saved. It would have been a
rather depraved pleasure to far too many of us if that error had
settled the tie, but it wasn’t to be.
We always want great ability in sport to be accompanied by some
kind of moral authority and, failing that, by an admirable, or at
least likeable, nature. We want all great performers to be like
Bobby or Freddie or Johnno or Jonny.
But sometimes we find great ability in a person who appals us.
Ivan Lendl was a wonderful tennis player, but his gloomy intensity,
his joyless point-gathering and his pushing of the rules to the
limits alienated many who watched him. He never won Wimbledon
because we just wouldn’t let him. John McEnroe’s unstable
personality and unspeakable behaviour made his sport a thing of
great ugliness, despite his astonishing talent.
Michael Schumacher must have been hard even for a German to
love. He was an incomparably skilled driver, he passed the supreme
test of ability allied to courage every time it rained and yet his
demeanour, his smugness, the air of dodginess that forever hung
over him, will compromise his astonishing record always. Lewis
Hamilton, the corporate-speaking mendacious tax exile, is similarly
learning that talent alone is not enough to make you loveable.
Diego Maradona is forever being compared to Pelé, but there is no
comparison to be made: one was a mad, cheating drug addict and the
other wasn’t.
To some extent, these things are a matter of taste. Some people
can’t stand Kevin Pietersen because of his overweening sense of
self, his crassness, his flamboyance. I find his genius compelling,
so that for me at least, he rises above his faults. It is a thing
narrowly achieved, but in my eyes he just about pulls it off.
In the same way, many people, most obviously those who strongly
identify with his club, see Ronaldo as a persecuted genius. Fair
enough. Such people must accept that there are other views, that
Ronaldo, for all his skills, is the man who flings himself to the
floor at every nudge, winks when getting a fellow pro sent off and
is more convinced of his own loveliness than any man — or woman —
should be.
One last thing. Ronaldo tries a trick, gets chopped down, throws
a hissy fit — then gets up and tries the same trick on the same
player. That’s courage. What’s more, he tries a shot from 40 yards
while everyone in the stadium is booing his every touch. Had he
missed, had the ball ballooned into the stands, he would have
looked a fool. But no, Ronaldo took it on, with a glorious result.
Ronaldo has courage, all right, and in considerable measure. I
really think he must be the best footballer in the world.
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Simon Barnes is the multi-award-winning chief
sportswriter at The Times.
